Researchers measured scrotal temperatures of 29 subjects in three separate 60-minute sessions in which they varied their sitting positions–keeping legs close together or spread apart, and alternately using or not using a lap pad beneath the computer.

“Within 10 to 15 minutes their scrotal temperature is already above what we consider safe, but they don’t feel it,” Dr. Yefim Sheynkin, a urologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and leader of the study, told Reuters.

A lap pad made little difference in reducing scrotal temperature. Only when subjects sat with legs open at about a 70-degree angle was there a change in the heating effect. Even in those cases, the effect was only delayed and it took about 30 minutes to reach an elevated temperature.

There have been no studies on how laptops may affect male fertility, but earlier research has shown that warming the scrotum more than one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) is enough to damage sperm.

Dr. Sheynkin suggested that the effects may not be permanent, but could take months to go away.

Without saying why, federal traffic safety officials have quietly altered crash data, revealing that more than three times as many people die in wrecks linked to tire failures than previously acknowledged.

A conviction for domestic violence in the U.S. strips a person of the legal right to possess a gun. It doesn't matter if the conviction is a misdemeanor or a felony. The rationale for the federal law: Domestic violence is a red flag for future violence — including potentially deadly violence with a firearm.

Despite mounting casualties from crashes of recreational off-highway vehicles, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has shot down a proposal to track injuries and deaths involving the popular trail machines.